<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>You Are A Terrible Liar by BID</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144256">You Are A Terrible Liar</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BID/pseuds/BID'>BID</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dishonored (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Biting, M/M, Post DH1, Pre-Relationship, Royal Spymaster Daud (Dishonored), pre-spymaster daud</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:34:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27144256</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BID/pseuds/BID</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Daud pushes the paper away and looks up at Corvo, gaze intense and expression bitter. "How do you do it?"</p>
<p>"Do what?"</p>
<p>"Sitting here, talking about her like I'm not the one who killed her," Daud stands up, hands on the desk as if ready for a fight, "Like you didn't see me do it!"</p>
<p>---<br/>Aka.: Paperwork derailed by trust issues.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Corvo Attano/Daud</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>117</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>You Are A Terrible Liar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegrumblingirl/gifts">thegrumblingirl</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Grumble, once upon a time you gave me a prompt, "You're a terrible liar!" from some meme on tumblr? Here it is, hope you'll like it either way :')</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is night. Finally. </p>
<p>Emily is dead asleep in Corvo's bed, his room mysteriously untouched after over half a year of madness. Her crown sits on the nightstand, next to the hot cocoa and the story she'd picked out. Corvo isn't one to talk much, but he likes to read her stories, the old routine settling something in both of them after so long.</p>
<p>A sense of home. Belonging. </p>
<p>What does not belong- or perhaps, what <em>now</em> belongs here <em>too</em> is Corvo's current company. </p>
<p>It is night, sure, but that does not mean that the work is done, or that Corvo feels trusting enough to rest. The paperwork piles high on the desk towards the other side of the room, and both Corvo and Daud are sitting by the desk, opposite each other, and reading through it.</p>
<p>"This can't possibly be a Lord Protector's job," Daud mutters as he throws yet another letter onto the pile for 'Currently Unimportant' things. </p>
<p>Naturally, Corvo will go through said stack later to be sure that it is all in order. "It's an Empress' job," he replies blandly, as he skims a report, "several weeks worth of it."</p>
<p>Daud shakes his head, "Sure, but why do <em>you</em> know how to do it?"</p>
<p>Corvo pauses, writes down the gist of the report in his notebook and where to find the whole thing before he files it in the cabinet behind them. Only then does he turn back to Daud, "She said there was no point in me standing my legs into my chest."</p>
<p>"That's not an idiom in gristolian," Daud corrects, seemingly automatic as he firmly presses his lips shut as soon as it is out, looking chastised without a word being said. </p>
<p>Corvo rolls his eyes (idioms have never been his strength) and sits back down, grabbing the next paper, "She said there's no use in me standing around <em>looking pretty</em>. I've been doing this for twenty years, excluding the Spymaster's work, but it's not all that different so long it's the backlog."</p>
<p>He continues for perhaps a minute or two, before it registers that Daud is still staring at the same paper. </p>
<p>"Anything interesting?" Corvo asks as he writes. </p>
<p>Daud pushes the paper away and looks up at Corvo, gaze intense and expression bitter. "How do you do it?"</p>
<p>"Do what?"</p>
<p>"Sitting here, talking about her like I'm not the one who killed her," Daud stands up, hands on the desk as if ready for a fight, "Like you didn't see me do it!"</p>
<p>"Keep your voice down," Corvo snaps quietly, standing up too and dragging Daud to the far end of the room, putting the crackling fireplace and the audiograph, that quietly plays music, between them and Emily.</p>
<p>"It made sense to accept my help with the lighthouse, with getting her back. But I am a monster, I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't be at court, I shouldn't be staining your reputation with mine!" Daud hisses quietly, tense and despairing, for all that Corvo can tell Daud wants it to look like anger. Like fury.</p>
<p>"You're not a monster," Corvo replies with a sigh, flinching back as Daud tears his wrist from Corvo's hold with a snarl.</p>
<p>"You are a <em>terrible</em> liar!" he snaps, turning on his heels and rushing out of the room, but Corvo blinks forward, just through the door as Daud shuts it behind him, and catches him again. Crowds Daud against the outside of the door for nobody to see in the empty hallway. Corvo had ordered no patrols outside his rooms while he is in, or he'd go mad constantly hearing footsteps.</p>
<p>"So what if you are?" he demands, pinning Daud to the door, knowing full well that he couldn't stop the assassin if he didn't want to be stopped, he has no illusions about being stronger than Daud, "So what if people fear you, if everyone knows who you are and what you do?"</p>
<p>“I won’t kill for you," Daud snaps immediately, "or for coin-”</p>
<p>“I know,” Corvo interrupts him, "I don't need you to."</p>
<p>But Daud still stares up at him expectantly, "What are you using me for then."</p>
<p>“As a warning,” Corvo admits, voice pitched low, “A shield, a bulwark. No one would be stupid enough to try and go through you to get me."</p>
<p>Daud unexpectedly lets out a laugh, a low rumble that Corvo can <em>feel</em> through his clothes where they are still pressed together, chest to chest.</p>
<p>"So you close the jaws of the biggest monster you know around your jugular and pray it won't bite, just where everything else is trying to get a taste."</p>
<p>"You won'-"</p>
<p>Daud barely moves, his body and hands still pinned to the door, but there are teeth on Corvo's throat, enough pressure as that Corvo doesn't dare move, doesn't dare speak, doesn't even realise he stopped breathing. </p>
<p>He can feel Daud's hot, wet breath against his skin, nose pressed in the soft spot under his ear, and pain blooming as Daud's teeth dig in , slowly, slowly, and Corvo is <em>hypnotised</em> by the sensation as it sends chills down his back, has the hair at his neck stand up and the mark flaring automatically without him even knowing what he'd <em>do</em>.</p>
<p>Before he can think of anything though, before the pain becomes unbearable, before his breath runs out, Daud pulls back and smiles up bitterly.</p>
<p>"Watch what you say Attano, or one might think you <em>trust</em> me."</p>
<p>And just like that he's gone, only leaving behind a flicker of void black particles, and a patch of frigid skin on Corvo's throat, lined with a ring of red teeth marks, shaking hands, shaking breath-</p>
<p>Fuck.</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>Corvo tends to paperwork in lieu of sleeping the entire night, always keeping Emily in his peripheral and his sword in reach. </p>
<p>He doesn't know what Daud had meant, not in the grand scheme of <em>them</em>, or if there'd been any meaning at all aside from mockery. If the assassin would return, or if he'd left entirely.</p>
<p>Void knows why Corvo had thought this was a good idea (he knows why, it's because he's desperate), why he'd let the assassin run off (because they aren't equals, Daud is at his prime with the Whalers at his back and Corvo near collapse, alone), or why it gnaws at him so that he feels betrayed all over by Daud of all people, he doesn't even trust him (it's not betrayal, it's abandonment, the betrayal only comes when he goes against him, Corvo knows and <em>yet</em>).</p>
<p>---</p>
<p>The next morning Daud shows up at the same time as the servant who serves breakfast, more paperwork in hand and talking about nobles his Whalers have stalked before Corvo can even question his presence. Before he can question whatever he feels settle in his chest.</p>
<p>Appeased, relieved (happy).</p>
<p>The ring of red and blue only peaks out of Corvo's collar when he turns his head, disguised by the stubble he didn't bother shaving. Nobody comments, but he catches Daud looking, his expression as pleased as it looks guilty, though it's gone as soon as it appeared.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>